this looks kind of fun

Look at the list of (100) books below. Bold the ones you’ve read. Italicize the ones you want to read. Leave blank the ones that you aren’t interested in. Movies don’t count.
1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire(Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)2
7. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds(Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Some of my favorites are here, some that I read and reread when I was a teenager, like #77, 86, 96. I'm also a big fan of #5-7. No James Herriot, though. I love his books, and they always seem to get overlooked on these types of lists. How about you?

spring sprung!

What a wonderful week of weather! (Fun with alliteration! And exclamation points!) Finally, it is not cold and wet. We have reacquainted ourselves with the local playgrounds, and the backyard, and the grill. This does, of course, slow down the knitting and blogging. . .
It feels like I haven't touched my knitting needles in days. This isn't actually true, but it is true that I haven't really sat down specifically to knit in days. I have done some knitting here and there, waiting at the drugstore for a prescription, hanging out at a friend's house, a couple of rows at a time. Mostly I've just wanted to be spending time in the sun with the kids, so that's what I've done. I figure, childhood and springtime weather in New England are far more fleeting than yarn. :)
I hope you have got some sun and are enjoying it as well!

kip

Since I started knitting, I've heard about how knitting in public will cause all sorts of people to come up to you and check out what you are doing. I always wondered exactly where these people were knitting, because that never happened to me. Depending on what I was working on, this may be have been due to the sweating and cursing, but still.
Well, today a guy came up to me while I was working on Baby Sister's sock (they should be done about the time we wear the same shoe size). "Bootie?" he asked, and I replied that yes, it was a sock. He asked if it was for a niece or nephew, and I said it was for my daughter, at which point he asked if I was expecting. Now, I hope this was because of the stereotype of the pregnant lady knitting baby booties and not because of my appearance. He also was surprised by the fact that Baby Sister was home with her dad and I was out knitting at a coffeeshop. Yes, people, I was approached by the guy from 1955!
Still, it was nice. It's funny how a hobby that seems so solitary has actually made me much more likely to talk to strangers.

just a quick post

. . . because I'm really tired. It's been kind of a rough week: the baby's sick (and tomorrow was supposed to be her birthday party - the Big Oh-One), sleeping around here's been kind of iffy, it was the end of the quarter at school which means doing lots of grades and comments, and my camera is, I think, broken. Bleargh. I'm terribly sorry to make anybody read my whining, so I will quit now. I hope to post soon with some actual knitting, and perhaps J can work his magic handyman fix-it-ness and there'll be pictures too. Cross your fingers, or if that will impede your knitting, perhaps your toes.
In the meantime, some images from Baby Sister's first year, AKA gratuitous pictures of my beautiful daughter:


How quickly it goes by. The first birthday is so bittersweet!

well, duh

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The Midland
The South
Boston
The West
North Central
http://www.gotoquiz.com/">Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Easter art

I love decorating eggs with the kids!
Something about these holiday activities makes all of us act like kids. J, for example, is normally very serious, but he always has a great time making paper snowflakes at Christmas, decorating the Easter eggs, etc. (Actually, one year he had a little too much fun and made an egg with a picture of a naked lady on it. That one hid at the bottom of the basket, away from impressionable young eyes.) This year, since the boys are fanatics for anything motor-related, we got a kit to make veh-egg-cles, to quote the label. The school bus:

We also played around with food coloring, because the kit came with a grand total of three colors. And Little Brother continued in his tradition of putting the same egg in every color. Usually it comes out looking like an egg-shaped turd, but this year it's pretty cool - it's the one on the right.

And finally, what it would look like if Picasso designed fire trucks:

Have a relaxing holiday, internets. Don't eat too much chocolate.

all packed up

Anybody want a kid?

Buy two and save on shipping!

What is it about kids and small spaces? Do you see a narrow opening and think, I bet I could fit in there ? I find these guys in cupboards, behind furniture, under their sister's highchair, and in laundry baskets. Maybe they are overwhelmed by my stifling maternal love and are desperately seeking a little privacy. I should go ask them. Several times . . . while holding them tightly on my lap . . .

time for tea

Finally - the long-overdue FO post for the tea rose halter!
Pattern: Tea Rose Halter by Wenlan Chia from the spring '07 IK
Yarn: Brown Sheep's Cotton Fleece (held double) in provincial rose, a little over 2 skeins
Needles: Boye circular needles (from their convertible circular needle kit) #11 and #13
Modifications: none, except the yarn substitution

I finished knitting this what feels like ages ago! It took me forever to put the crochet-chain straps on (I ended up having them tie at the neck) and to find a time for J to take pictures for me.

This was my second lace project, and it was way easier than the last one for some reason. I was able to memorize the stitch pattern pretty quickly, and it just went really smoothly. It seemed to take a very long time to dry though - about 2-3 days. When I had finished knitting it, I noticed that although the bottom consisted of six repeats of the lace pattern and the top was five, they looked like they were about the same length. So I blocked it fairly early in the morning, laying it out on my bed, and pinned out the bottom. I had a brief moment of panic when bedtime rolled around, the thing was nowhere near dry, and J was less than enthused about the suggestion of breaking out our sleeping bags (can you believe him?). Luckily it didn't shrink back up when I took out the pins, and it finished drying at a leisurely pace on a cardboard box.

And after much hesitant decision-making, I decided to go with the ties, as in the pattern.

The back does seem to sag a bit, though, so maybe I'll end up anchoring those straps in the back somewhere.

Anyway, I'm still pretty pleased with it. My first adult-sized garment! I can't in all honesty call it a sweater, I suppose. I am so wearing it to my high school reunion this fall!